Babies!!

 I've already talked about ringing in nest boxes of various kinds--but we also ring chicks in natural nests when they are at the right age. 'Right' means a variety of things but essentially--are their legs developed enough to take the ring and it not slip off ?, are the chicks going to stay in the nest and not leave it too early?, will disturbing the nest affect the parent birds?

One of the species using natural nests from which we have ringed many chicks over the years are those of Barn Swallows. This morning we ringed 9 chicks in two nests and these were near perfect for ringing as shown by the quick picture we took of one of them:-

The chicks were well grown with the eyes recently opened; and you can see the tail and some of the wing feathers are just emerging from what we call 'pin'. This is when the feather part breaks out through the waxy sheath which protects the growing feather. These little beauties settled straight back into the nest after ringing and should be on the wing in a couple of weeks.

Some weird and possibly not such good news from the second Kestrel box on the farm. Last week I reported 4 warm eggs laid by what we think is a first time breeding pair. I went to check to estimate when the chicks would be ready to ring and was puzzled and alarmed to find only 1 chick in the nest--with the female parent in attendance. We can only speculate that a corvid ( member of the crow family) must have stolen either 3 eggs or chicks? But the strange thing is why one was left--corvids usually repeatedly visit a nest once found until everything has been plundered. Fingers crossed that the remaining chick will be protected by its parents.

Better news from Pat who has been catching good numbers of quite recently fledged baby finches which appear to be breeding well this year.

Very young finches are quite distinctive from their parents as these pictures show:-

The speckled breast gives this bird away as a juvenile Greenfinch. It's probably a male judging by the amount of yellow on the primary wing featheres and the grey tips to the primary coverts. Like all recently fledged songbirds, this individual will gradually moult out these juvenile feathers and replace them with more adult types over the coming year. As I have pointed out previously ( many times!!) we look for evidence of any of these unmoulted juvenile feathers as a clue to ageing birds in their first year.

Here's a juvenile Goldfinch--as the bright yellow and black wings suggest. But where is the red, black and white head?. Another feature of juvenile plumage is that in some species the bright patterns which can distinguish males from females can result in aggression outside the breeding season. This can be a problem for birds which generally feed in flocks--like finches--so often young birds don't show these features until they are a bit older and more able to look after themselves.

Lastly, I've posted some lovely pictures of adult male and female Siskins from Pat's garden--so I thought I'd show some pictures of a recently fledged juvenile--which continues the same story as above:-

As you can see--speckled, less colourful generally, and buff tips on many feathers. The next close up picture of the wing and tail points some of these out a bit better:-

1= the patches at the base of the primaries are white--yellow as the bird ages

2= the tail and main wing feathers are very pointed

3= the tips of the greater coverts are buff not yellow/green

4= the edges to the tertial feathers are buff rather than green and white 

Very few of these feathers have been moulted out and we reckon this bird has left the nest very recently--it hasn't taken it long to find a rich food source in Pat's garden!!--probably led to it by the parents.